European Writer Congresses

The European Writer's Congress (EWC) is a Brussels, Belgium -based organization representing individual writers from across Europe. The 60,000-member group includes writers from 58 member organizations from 30 European countries. The organization was originally known as the Federation of European Writers' Association and was established in 1977 with a mission to facilitate cultural and literary cooperation across Europe. As part of its mission, the group is focused on harnessing the individual creativity and literary work of writers to shape how Europe is viewed by the rest of the world. The group actively works on promoting personal contacts between writers and literary translators from different countries across Europe. It also works on promoting debate on the contribution of writers to European culture and cultural policy issues. Members of the EWC currently include writers of fiction and non-fiction works, poetry, children's literature, screenplays, drama and multi-media works of all sorts.

The group is best known for its efforts involving authors' rights, cultural policy and cultural exchange. Since its inception, EWC has been working diligently on promoting awareness of issues such as copyright protection, licensing agreements, fair remuneration for authors, and the importance of individual creativity. The organization has also worked on fostering awareness of the need for writers to be fully recognized for their creations, by publishers and distributors of their works. In addition, the EWC has been advocating the need for better policies across Europe for enabling equal access to literary works and bodies of knowledge. The group has been arguing for more content digitization, translation and conversion of literary content into different formats so as to make content available to as many people across Europe regardless of nationality or language.

More recently, the EWC has been calling vigorously for better protection against online piracy and the theft of intellectual property on the Internet. The EWC has been trying to convince European legislators about the need for stronger laws for combating copyright violations and more punitive punishments for those who steal or violate copyrights. As part of its efforts, the EWC has been arguing for laws that would hold Internet Service Providers (ISPs) more directly responsible for any copyright infringement that happens on their networks.